This invention relates to pallets and more particularly to pallets formed of a corrugated cardboard material. The invention further relates to a container utilizing the pallet of the invention as a base and yet further relates to a method of forming a pallet.
Pallets have been formed of wood, plastic, corrugated cardboard, and other materials. As compared to wood pallets, corrugated cardboard pallets avoid the liability problems relating to slivers and nails, are extremely lightweight and therefore relatively easy to move about, and may be readily recycled in a grinding operation. As compared to plastic pallets, corrugated cardboard pallets are relatively inexpensive and are relatively lightweight and therefore relatively easy to move around, and are readily recycled by grinding. However, corrugated cardboard pallets in general provide less strength and rigidity than plastic or wooden pallets and therefore are limited in their use to relatively small and/or relatively lightweight items. In an effort to improve the strength and rigidity of corrugated cardboard pallets, the pallets have been constructed utilizing a lower corrugated sheet; a plurality of corrugated blocks glued in upstanding fashion to the sheet with a block at each corner and intermediate blocks along each side of the sheet; an upper corrugated sheet positioned over and glued to the tops of the upstanding blocks; and a tray formed from a further corrugated sheet and positioned on top of the upper sheet to form the final pallet. Whereas this construction provides excellent strength and rigidity to the pallet, the blocks are totally exposed and as a result and are often knocked loose by material handling equipment such as forklift trucks, pallet jacks or the like with the result that the pallet collapses. Since these pallets are most typically used to form the base of a container with a sleeve positioned between the side walls of the tray and a lid closing the top of the sleeve, collapsing of a pallet in a stack of containers has disastrous results with respect to the entire stack.